I knew these people, these two people;
they were in love with each other.
The girl was very young about
seventeen or
eighteen, I guess, and the guy was quite a bit older. He was kinda raggedy and wild, and
she was very beautiful. Y'know?
And together they turned everything into a kind of an adventure, and she liked that. Just an ordinary trip down to the grocery store was full of adventure. They were always laughing at stupid things. He liked to make her laugh. and they didn't much care for anything else, uh, cause all they wanted to do was be with each other. They were always together. and he uh he loved more than he ever thought possible. He couldnt stand being away from her, um, during the day when he went to work. So he quit, just to be home with her. And then he'd get another job when the money ran out... and then he'd quit again. But pretty soon she started to worry.
Her:
About what?
Him:
Money, I guess, not having enough, not knowing when the next cheque was coming in.
Her:
Yep, I know that feeling.
Him:
So, he started getting kind of torn inside.
Her:
How do you mean?
Him:
Well, he knew had to work to suport her, but he couldn't stand being away from her either... and the more he was away from her, the crazier he got. Except now he got real crazy. He started imagining all kinds of things
Her:
Like what?
Him:
He started thinking that she was seeing other men on the sly. He'd come home from work and accuse her of spending the day with somone else. He'd yell at her and break things in the trailer.
Her:
Trailer...?
Him:
Yes, they lived in a trailer home. Anyway he started t'drink real bad, and he'd stay out late just to test her, to see if she'd get jealous. He wanted her to get jealous, but she didn't, she just worried about him, but that got him even madder. He thought that if she didn't get jealous of him, she didn't really care about him. Jealousy was a sign of her love for him... and then one night
Guitar starts here, spanish, soft bassy piano occasionally.
Him:
One night she told him that she was pregnant, she was about three or four months pregnant, and he didn't even know. And then suddenly, everything changed. He stopped drinking, got a steady job. He was convinced that she loved him now because she was carrying his child, and he was going to dedicate himself to creating a home for her. But a funny thing started to happen. He didnt even notice it at at first. She started to change. From the day the baby was born, she began to get irritated at everything around her.
She got mad at everything. Even the baby seemed to be an injustice to her. He kept trying to make everything all right for her, buy her things, take her out to dinner once a week. For two years he struggled to pull them back together like when they first met... but finally he knew that it was never going to work out.
So he hit the bottle again, but this time it got mean. This time, when he came home late at night, she wasn't worried about him, or jealous, she was just enraged. She accused him of holding her captive, of making her have a baby. She told him that she dreamed about escaping, that was all she dreamed about, escape. She saw herself at night, running naked down a highway, running across flelds, running down river beds, always running. And always just when she was about to get away, he'd be there, he'd stop her somehow; he'd just appear and stop her.
And when she told him these dreams, he believed them. He knew she had to be stopped, or she'd leave him forever. So he tied a cow-bell to her ankle, so he could hear at night when she tried to get out of bed. But she learned how to muffle the bell by stuffing a sock in it, and inching her way out of the bed and into the night. He caught her one night when the sock fell out, and he heard her trying to run in the highway. He caught her and dragged her back to the trailer, and tied her to the stove with his belt. He just left her there, went back to bed and lay there, listening to her scream, and he listened to his son scream. And he was surprised at himself, because.. he didnt feel anything anymore. All he wanted to do was sleep. And for the first time, he wished he were far away, lost in a deep vast country where nobody knew him. Somwhere without language, or streets, and he dreamed about this place without knowing it's name.
And when he woke up, he was on fire. There were blue flames burning the sheets of his bed. He ran through the flames, towards the only two people he loved. But they were gone.
His arms were burning. And he threw himself outside, and rolled in the wet ground, and then he ran, he never looked back at the fire, he just ran. He ran until the sun came up, and he couldnt run any further, and when the sun went down, he ran again. For five days he ran like this.
Until every sign of man had disappeared.
This is a speech (conversation) between two people in the movie
Paris, Texas. Which also made it onto the soundtrack, by
Ry Cooder. Very good stuff.
Also, Wim Wenders is a genius. Highly underrated. U2 have said that they got alot of their inspiration for The Joshua Tree from this film. Highly recommended.